Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Dr. Esekumemu V. Clark
Pollution is affecting fishing and drinking water. The barren land has
contributed to a reduction in agricultural productivity growth. In
addition, people have been forced to move from their villages as a
result of oil corporations’ activities in these places. Again, there is
inadequate or non-existent infrastructure in these local communities.
Indeed, there are no good roads, many places have no health centres,
few schools, no transports or federal institutions in these places. For
example, in the village of Batan where oil was found more than thirty
years ago, there is not a single state infrastructure, the only primary
school was built with the local community efforts, despite the fact that
oil from the village contributed US $ 380,000 every day to the
country’s economy (IHT November 12, 1998). In any case, such
problems seriously facing the Ijaw communities were referred to by
Boro in the early 1960s. But successive Nigerian administrations had
failed to pay fuller attention and sought immediate ways to put in
place a fast-track measure to tackle the issues of social exclusion,
development and environment long-simmering in the body politics of
the country.
In fact, the most recent case of Ijaw Youths occupying some of
the oil installations, thus reducing production by more than 700,000
barrels out of the country’s 2.3 million barrels per day, has really
demonstrated the seriousness of the appalling conditions in the oilproducing
region of the country. The Izon (Ijaw) people, among
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